A Town Without Steel: Envisioning Homestead

Rating:
Summary: A honest look at Homestead
Review: Having once lived in the Mon valley and now living in DC, it was hard for me to swallow the authors various descriptions of Homestead. But as I make my journies back to my home town, I realize that the novel is just truthful. The author does an excellent job of describing the life and times of the current Mon Valley

Rating:
Summary: Some interesting information
Review: This is an interesting work, covering the neighborhoods of Homestead, West Homestead and Munhall in Southwestern PA, or "The Rust Belt" as the authors refer to it. While William Serrin wrote a good recent history, Modell and Brodsky prefer to do an anthropological and photographical study. Brodsky does a fine job of drawing images from the life of Homestead onto film, though it would have been nice to have her show how things changed over time and also offer some more captions on her photos. Much of the work, sadly, seems a bit old - the interviews and photos were last done about 5 years before the book even hit the press. Then again, you are unlikely to find any more recent studies of steel towns that have been abandoned by big business and have had to cope. Modell has obviously done a good job of interviewing and she lets residents tell their own story. On the other hand, she repeats a few quotes in the book, showing a lack of editorship, and also puts her own "spin" on some comments. She seemed a more unbiased observer though than most anthropologists I have read. Few also have studied life in a city in decay and looked at the attitudes that result. Especially interesting was how many people remembered a Golden Age when many of us Pittsburghers remember smog and filth. This is a fine compliment to Serrin's work, but I wish there were more recent studies on the town. It hasn't vanished just because the media stopped paying attention to it, in praise of the latest industry to hit it big.